Does “always be closing” ring a bell? If not, you may not be a rainmaker! If not, watch the movie Glengarry Glenn Ross’ famous Alec Baldwin “ABC” or “coffee is for closers” scenes on YouTube. Why? It always lights a fire in the belly that there are others out there competing against you and you need to work to keep up. I firmly believe that anyone can bring in business with enough effort.
However, as in Glen Garry Glen Ross, there is a downside to closing the deal! In personal injury law, most of the time, the first lawyer to speak with the client gets the case. That is just the way it is in auto litigation. In more complex cases, like a pelvic mesh case, I will refer those cases out to firms that specialize in that area.
In auto law, if you are the first person to speak with a client, it is important to have the client understand that their case has low, medium, or high value. If you don’t give a valuation range to a client, often they may not stay with you. If the client thinks that you are a lawyer who will settle for the first offer, then why would they stick with you?
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VALUE DESTRUCTION OR VALUE ADJUSTMENT IN PERSONAL INJURY
Posted on July 14, 2022 in For Lawyers
So, what reduces value?
Well, prior accidents and gaps in treatment are the largest areas that reduce values in the eyes of the insurance carriers, who set the playing field in personal injury. If you had a prior car accident before the one you are my client for, then there will always be an argument that the injuries from this accident are merely the result of the other crash. I have had cases, where clients had 4 accidents over the course of the two years that I was representing them. Four accidents just makes your case really hard to value and reduces the eventual settlement value substantially. Nobody is ever going to be able to tease out which injury came from which crash.
Gaps in treatment are the other big issue that reduces value. What is a gap? Well, perhaps you had a bad crash and did not go to the ER and then felt crappy and hoped the pain would go away. Then, the first time you see a doctor is 10 days later. To all involved, it looks an awful lot like you were not injured enough to require medical attention for ten days. The simple inference is that the crash did not cause you any serious injury and hence you were just looking for a payday rather than actually hurt.
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PICKING CASES: Take the Case? Refer it out? Turn it down?
Posted on July 14, 2022 in For Lawyers
Do you want the client’s case??? One of the critical pieces of personal injury law is Case Selection. It simply cannot be overstated how important this is. While you need a steady volume of cases to make case selection an issue, that is a separate topic. Case selection is simply the 80/20 rule or figuring out what is the best use of your time and resources. For me, car accident cases are my bread and butter and keep the lights on and the bills paid, the kids in private school etc. The other cases like medical malpractice, products cases, slip and falls with serious injuries, suing the city and carbon monoxide poisoning, are the more entertaining and high value fights.
In the auto cases, case selection is fairly straightforward. Assuming liability is clear, injury determines value along with a host of other factors. So, when a new person calls, I am listening for injury and makes and models of cars to guess at coverage. Fact patterns in North Philly are often plagued with hit and run drivers, serious injuries and not enough insurance coverage. The Pennsylvania State Minimum coverage is $15,000 and that is never enough for any injury. Fact patterns in the Philly suburbs often involve plenty of coverage, but inexperienced or out of control drivers in big cars and inevitably some blaming of the other party, traffic conditions etc. Usually, I assume that there is some element of texting and driving.
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Pan Mass Challenge
Posted on July 07, 2022 in In the News
After a two year hiatus for me, the Pan Mass Challenge Fundraiser for Cancer Research is Back ON and I need your help. I have bicycled this event for 9 years. We ride 200 miles over two days in early August in Massachusetts. The first day is long at 108 miles from Sturbridge to the beginning of Cape Cod. The second day we ride the entire Cape from Bourne to Provincetown. Usually, it is a beautiful weekend. I have a $6,000 fundraising goal (obligation). I match every donation dollar for dollar. The PMC raises $60 million every year, which is a crazy amount of money and every dollar goes to research. PMC has raised $831 Million for Dana Farber since 1980. We are truly a fundraising powerhouse to be reckoned with. There is free Harpoon beer and Legal Sea Foods chowder and a lot of large businesses donate time, money, and effort to make the ride possible and enjoyable. So, if you can, please donate. My donation page is:
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Carbon monoxide poisoning and CO lawsuits
Posted on July 07, 2022 in For Lawyers
Carbon monoxide poisoning recently caused the sad and likely avoidable deaths of a family, which was visiting a resort in the Bahamas. CO reduces your red blood cells’ ability to bind with oxygen, so you will be breathing fine, but you will start to asphyxiate rapidly if you are in a room filled with CO. A standard blood test will show an elevated carboxyhemoglobin level and reveal the correct diagnosis. The treatment for CO poisoning is actually just plain old air or oxygen. The family would have a strong CO poisoning case against the resort. I handle a regular, but thankfully small, number of carbon monoxide (CO) death and serious injury cases. These deaths and less serious injuries caused by CO are thoroughly avoidable. In the Bahamas case, it appears that poorly vented air conditioning was the culprit. The deaths were preventable in three ways. First, any gas burning appliance emits CO, but the CO is not a concern if the CO is properly vented. So, we know that there was a malfunction in the venting of the CO. Second, CO detectors are cheap and effective in preventing this sort of tragedy. Here, the resort conceded that CO detectors were not in the rooms, though they are not mandated for use in the Bahamas. At lethal levels, the CO alarms would have sounded. The resort has rectified this oversight. Thirdly, the family was feeling poorly, was reportedly nauseous and tired the day before and were suffering the hallmark signs of CO poisoning. While feeling poorly on vacation abroad may not be remarkable, that plus an alarming CO detector would be.
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Uvalde, Guns, and Hubris
Posted on July 07, 2022 in In the News
Stop school shooting – road sign
As a parent, human, and American, the disaster that was the school shooting at Uvalde cannot be more raw and upsetting. This disaster was the result of the confluence of two problems. One is our gun crazy country and the other is the hubris of law enforcement.
Hubris means arrogance or an exaggerated self-confidence or belief in your own rightness and importance. The ancient Greeks believed hubris was a huge character flaw. In my professional work, I get to be the one pointing out the hubris and failures of people when they injure others through their ignorance and disregard of safety. Everyday people involved in a lawsuit are simply not used to being confronted and questioned about why they did something stupid and asked to explain it.
Unfortunately, in most of my cases, people simply do not do the basics of their jobs with predictably painful results. If you build something and it’s not to code, someone may get hurt. If you disregard driving laws, people are going to get hurt. If you fail to prevent obvious hazards, people will get hurt, and they will find me. TV and the media rarely reflect people taking responsibility for their actions. However, accountability comes at the end of lawsuits and generally years after someone screwed up and society has moved on to its latest disaster
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We all make mistakes: Medical Malpractice
Posted on July 07, 2022 in Medical Malpractice
Two exhausted surgeons with hands on their heads as a sign of congestion
I have been a lawyer for 25 years. I have not been sued for malpractice, yet. Nevertheless, if you are a responsible professional, you will have experienced periods of questioning yourself, others in your profession, or how better you could have handled a case, patient, customer, client etc. We are more highly educated and trained and get paid more money than most people for work that others cannot do. With that payment and training comes responsibility.
Often, malpractice cases involve surgery and death or other clear injuries and damages. I receive calls nearly every day from people who are very angry about poor medical care that they received from our doctors and hospitals. Ninety percent of these callers do not have a case that can be pursued in court. Why? Because, the problem they experienced has been rectified or fixed or they recovered. In other words, it is the rare case where a person suffers medical malpractice and has the damages to merit me bringing a case.
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Canada anyone? Changes to Roe v. Wade per Justice Alito.
Posted on July 07, 2022 in In the News
The U.S. Supreme Court often tinkers away on matters that do not affect us on a daily basis. Occasionally, they wade into the culture wars with predictably disastrous effects. The rightward tilt of the Court has always been there in my view. The current Court will never stand up for the individual. Usually, it takes the side of big business or those who got them to their position. This is not news.
The Court’s Dobbs decision throws a woman’s right to choose back to the States and the republican led states will outlaw abortion and the democratic led states will preserve a woman’s right to choose and will absorb a wave of women coming from red states.
In Pennsylvania, things are heading a little in the opposite direction. The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has a majority of judges, who ran as Democrats. In keeping with continuing Republican efforts to change rules that do not benefit their declining popularity, legislators are currently trying to change the way Pennsylvania elects its judges. The current PA Supreme Court has fought back against years of decisions that have benefited the insurance industry against the average citizen. And, with Dr. Oz and Doug Mastriano in the mix, it looks like Pennsylvania will remain a battleground state on a lot of national issues for years to come. While gerrymandering may be the root of all evil in politics, the Pennsylvania Supreme Court is just as frustrating to PA conservatives as the US Supreme Court is to democrats.
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A Word from the Editor: Welcome to Summer
Posted on June 24, 2022 in Uncategorized
The last months have been downright gnarly. Bad news abounds: shootings, war, soaring gas prices, SCOTUS–we even had Covid. So as we slide into Summer and a new Volume of The Neusletter, we hope that things turn around, and you get naught but tasty waves and a cool buzz, and that everything is fine.
All The Best!
THE NEUSLETTER
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HOW WILL YOU KNOW A PERSONAL INJURY CASE WHEN YOU HEAR ABOUT IT?
Posted on June 24, 2022 in Case Matters
Inevitably, a weird fact pattern means that you probably have a good personal injury case. I don’t know why, but it’s true. So, here are a series of weird ones from recent cases.
A Tree Falls In Frankford:
Frankford, as you may know, is a tough part of Philly with homes and yards chock a block on top of each other. One day after a storm a little old lady needed to have a limb cut down from a tree in her yard. Rather than pay a legitimate company to do the work, she hired someone with a chainsaw. They cut the limb down as requested. Unfortunately, the limb fell and hit my client who was standing with his back to the tree work. The limb hit him and knocked him unconscious. He was taken to the ER with a bad concussion and a shoulder fracture that needed surgery. My client found a lawyer, me, and I sent a nice letter telling the lady what happened. Later, in depositions, she accused my client of making the whole thing up. It is hard to prove cases when your client is either deceased or unaware of the incident unfolding. But, the facts here showed that there was a large tree sitting on his 5 foot high chain link fence in scene photos. My client was 6 foot 5 inches tall so the falling tree would have hit my client before hitting the fence. We never found the alleged chainsaw wielder, but the lady’s homeowners insurance paid up.
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